Gunman Gets 26 Years; Paralyzed Boy Testifies

Speaking just above a whisper from his wheelchair in a Compton courtroom, Richard Bautista, the 14-year-old who was shot on the Harbor Freeway two years ago as he returned home from a Dodger game, faced the man who left him paralyzed.

“I pray for you every night,” said the former altar boy. “That you find God in your heart. And I pray that you find love in your heart.”

The defendant, Leo Javier Burgos, 19, cocked his head, and listened alertly to what his young victim had to say. Whittier resident Bautista, whose injuries allowed him to muster only a strained monotone, spoke briefly and was wheeled to the back of the courtroom by his mother.

After hearing his victim speak, Burgos, an alleged member of the South Los Angeles gang, showed no physical response and said nothing.

Minutes later, he was sentenced to 26 years and eight months in prison for attempted murder and using a firearm. He will be credited with the 489 days he has already served. Burgos initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea May 19 during jury selection.

“Richard wanted [Burgos] to look at him physically in the eye and see what he had done,” said the boy’s mother, Ramona.

When Burgos opened fire, he had apparently mistaken those in Bautista’s car for rival gang members.

Neither Bautista, his cousin nor her friend, with whom he was riding on the night of the attack, belonged to any gang, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert Wright.

“They are the nicest people,” he said, adding that Bautista’s cousin, Cynthia Ibarra, is going to college and has worked at a law firm and that her friend, Jesus Magdaleno, is applying to college.

At the courtroom Tuesday, arriving alone, Burgos’ father, Efrain, sat down near Bautista’s family to watch the proceedings. After the sentencing, he expressed his regret over the shooting.

“At this time, I know that an apology is necessary,” Burgos said outside the courtroom, shaking slightly before the television cameras. “I apologize for my son and for myself, for maybe not doing what I should have.”

“[My son] is sorry for it, but if he said it out loud, no one would believe him, because they have already [stereotyped] him as having no remorse or feelings--no blood. He has a heart, and he feels the wrong he has done.”

On Sept. 22, 1995, Bautista--with Ibarra driving--was riding home in the passenger seat when a yellow van, flashing its high beams, pulled up behind them near the Manchester Avenue exit of the Harbor Freeway, Wright said.

Shots were fired, shattering the rear window. One bullet struck Bautista, then 12, in the top of the head; another grazed Magdaleno.

At a preliminary hearing, when Burgos was pleading not guilty, a juvenile testified that he was driving the van and that Burgos fired on the car from the passenger seat. The boy also testified that someone in the back of the van mistakenly said the three people in Ibarra’s car were their rivals.

After the sentencing, Efrain Burgos said, “My heart goes out to Richard because he’s a great person and he has a big heart.”

But Hector Bautista, Richard’s father, said he had not forgiven the younger Burgos.

Initially, doctors said Richard, who dreamed of becoming a world-class soccer player, might never recover his motor skills. But he eventually regained his ability to breathe freely and talk. On Monday, with the help of a walker, he took several steps in front of television cameras at a Lynwood hospital.